#THISIS30: Cassandra Jenkins

My 30th was really fun. I had a house concert at my house and I hosted two of my favorite bands. I had about 100 people. We started with a picnic and then we paraded from Central Park over to my house on the Upper West Side. It was a little bit overwhelming because I had family, friends, and friends from childhood there and I just kind of wanted to enjoy the show, but it was really fun.

What age do you actually feel like and why?

I feel like when I was a kid, I had to answer the question: "How old are you when you become an adult?" And my answer was 23. I remember hitting 23 and being shocked that was my answer. I feel like I'm kind of an adult.

What do you worry about? What keeps you up at night?

I'm a worrier. I guess right now I'm in the throes of recording a studio album. And it's really hard at night to just put it down.

I worry about the environment. I think about it every day. And I think that it is actually the kind of thing that I'm waking up at night thinking about.

What's something that used to matter tremendously to you but no longer feels important in your 30s?

My 20s were all about figuring out my preferences in terms of, I don't know, friendships and personal style and where I was going to be on a Friday night. And I think all of that has fallen off completely. I just think that my decision making process is so much different than it was when I was younger.

When you were 13 what did you think your life would look like at 30, and how is it different from what you imagined?

I think when I was 13 I was an awkward teenager. But I was obsessed—and this is kind of funny—I was obsessed with ELLE. And I would memorize the DELIA's catalogue. I would memorize every single page. I remember envisioning, while being the most awkward teenager you could possibly find, this completely glamorous life.

I grew up in New York City, so I feel like it involved this kind of glamorous New York life, uh hanging out in the Hearst Building and being interviewed by ELLE?

I definitely had this vision of myself as an adult, someone who's traveling a lot, and I think very different from the person I was when I was a teenager. But I think I'm almost exactly the same–I mean I'm living in the same place, I'm still playing the bass guitar like I was when I was 13.

But when I was 13 I didn't know how to do any of it. So now it's nice looking back and it and being like oh, the stuff that I was really excited about as a nerdy teenager is now what is carving out my day to day as an adult.

I think I'm doing what I thought I'd be doing but it was far more glamorous and movie-like as a child.

What are you saving up for?

Right now I'm saving up to finish my album and record a string section.

And in the long rung, I'm sure like a lot of other people my age I would like to have a house maybe in the Catskills. I would love for that to be soon. I don't think I've been excited about houses or the kind of more stable aspects of life until recently. In fact I was probably really just grossed out by them. But now I'm excited about it.

Are you or are you not turning into your mother?

Probably more than I realize. Up until I was in my 20s I was playing the bass guitar that my mom was playing when she was my age, taking photographs with her 35mm camera that she was shooting on when she was in her 20s and 30s. Her name is Sandra, my name is Cassandra. I feel like I've always been an extension of her. But more recently it's really hitting home because when my mom was in her 20s she met my dad.

They started a band together and went on tour and when they were 35, that's when they got married and had kids. And for me, that's four years away. That's always been a little bit of my internal timeline. A couple of years ago I met my boyfriend. We are in a band together. We're definitely touring together and making this record together.

I still wear a lot of my mom's clothes from the 70s and 80s. And so feeling like my mom has never been like a strange thing to me. But maybe, you know, seeing ways in which our bodies are very much the same, seeing mannerisms and things like that that other people point out to me is always strange.

We have very similar voices. Especially when we sing.

What is your relationship like with your body in your 30s versus how it was 10 years ago?

I've been thinking a lot about my relationship to my body and women's relationship to their bodies in America. I feel like it's shifting. And maybe this is just in my life, but I feel so much more at home in my body than I did when I was in my 20s. Though I am seeing more limitations in some ways, too.

It's harder to get over a hangover in the morning. It's harder to get on a flight and get off of a flight and feel 100%. When I was younger I could go for days without sleeping or eating or thinking about my body or being concerned about it at all.

But now I have to be much more conscious of treating myself well, otherwise I'm just going to kind of fall apart. And I'm thankful for that because I feel like I should be treating myself well. I feel like it's about time I learned how to really take care of myself.

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